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it has just struck me that it was very fortunate that i corrected the glitch in my chromebook yesterday, instead of just returning home and hope that it will correct itself. if i had not gone to the google store so soon after the glitch appeared, and had it corrected, i would be having a useless chrome book not working at all during this bank holiday. and with the shops closed today i might not be able to get the same expert help at the store today as it wont be fully manned. so i really have saved myself a lot of grieve by going there yesterday and get it sorted out so quick.

so now i am a bit shell shocked as it were, thinking of what it might have been and how i escaped that. i should be ecstatic at missing that fate, but i think humans cannot feel great joy at having escaped something we dont know what we missed.

i can imagine another timeline where i did not escape and am suffering the angst at not being able to get online as i would normally do. i am trying to savour that feeling of having narrowly escaped a calamity.

the sky outside my window is beginning to lighten now. as it is 5.55am . it’s very quiet here; no dawn chorus from noisy birds , one of the joys of living in a city, as opposed to the country where there are more birds about.

even the seagulls that normally would be nesting on the chimneys of the block of flats opposite me have gone. their young has grown up and flown off i think, that is why they are gone. and not because of the hawk which the estate hired to try to scare them away.

yesterday i was just on the outskirts of the nottinghill area, where the carnival is on, the police have placed road blocks on all the roads going into that area. i was not affected as the paddington library was just outside that area. must be real inconvenient for the motorists living there. i think they got good weather yesterday, in that the threatened rain did not come.

they expect the real rain to come today. the festival is still on today. huge rain clouds can be seen on the weather maps coming into london marching across london and practically covering london for the whole day.

the libraries are all closed today, so i wont be able to go there as i normally do to read the papers.

i read here in the papers online, ( i found a great aggregate website for it, better than the one i had before which got lost when the chromebook got glitched)that walking 20 mins everyday will be useful to keep off ageing. i suspect as much, but it seems fresh evidence has been found to support it. i think i will walk to the library now instead of taking the bus as i normally do.

it is so tempting to take the bus, as it is free for me. it will certainly save money for my westminster council for bus fares, as they pay my fare. haha. here is a case where it discourages walking. but people must do the healthy thing and forego the bus; and just because it is free, does not mean u must take it.

it is the same with plastic bags given away by the supermarkets. for years, i have taken my own bags because i dont subscribe to that attitude where if it is free, i must take it. well, from october, everyone in england will have to pay 5p for each of the bags. in wales and in scotland, this payment have allready been in place and dont seem to present problems so i am sure it will be so in england when it is implemented.

hope everyone bring their own bags. though i have been using the free bags that simon brings home to line my rubbish bins and use as rubbish bags. we shall have to find another solution to that. we used to buy plastic rubbish bags. but that would just propagate more plastic bags surely? i wonder what other people would do to solve this? sainsbury bags are bio degradable, maybe they all are nowadays, so maybe the whole thing has come too late, and no need to ban supermarket bags, but to make rubbish bags biodegradable instead. hmm, u can see solving one problem, or thinking we solve one problem leads to another , and worst one.

contactless cards are going from strength to strength. esp from 1sept, the limit will be raised to £30 per transaction. i have not used it, because i prefer to pay cash. but in uk plenty like it. i think once the buses and tubes adopted it, people become used to it and so it becomes a normal part of their life. it is a bit like credit cards … i remember i used them like as if they were normal when i came to uk, even though when i was growing up in malaysia i never use them.

added 7.50pm i think i know what happened to cause the glitch in my chromebook. i used a different email from what i registered with. instead of using the email with the @gmail.com , i forgot and used the @hotmail.com address. so that locked me out of my account in the chromebook. there must be a way to start again , but i dont know how . all i saw was the box asking me to type in my password, there was no box asking me for the email address again. so let this be a warning to those who are using chromebook. use the gmail account when u log on.